CSFF Tour - Lost Mission Day 3

We haven't had a tour like this for a while!

The CSFF Tour is finishing up discussing the new book Lost Mission by Athol Dickson. It has provoked a wide range of responses, from praise to "couldn't get into it" to "can't recommend it." The writing is almost universally praised, but the style sometimes threw people off. Others had some questions about issues raised in the book, or agendas being promoted. There's a lot to consider, and I can't sum it all up. Be sure to go to Becky Miller's page where she keeps track of all who have posted.

I've even had a hard time narrowing down what I want to discuss, but beforewarned:

THERE BE SPOILERS AHEAD!

One of the issues brought up very prominently is immigration. Two of the characters are from Mexico, and they cross over illegally. One of them comes feeling a holy call to preach, and the other needs work to save up so his family can buy a little restaurant so they can support themselves in their own village. Both of them have noble reasons to come, but they do it by following a coyote across the desert. Another character is a pastor who opens a ministry to the Hispanic immigrants in the city, without differentiating between legal and illegal immigrants.

Athol Dickson gets a little comment in about the "artificiality" of borders, and he may be more sympathetic to one side over the other, but on the whole, I thought he showed issues as they are. Some illegal immigrants go about their business to support themselves or their family. Some get drunk and cause significant problems and suffering. And the rich businessman who rails against illegal immigrants has a Mexican servant for his house for years.

Some of the debate on the tour has been whether it is okay for Christians to do something good by breaking the law - the old "ends justifying the means" argument. I don't want to be a relativist or utilitarian in my thinking, but I can't help but think of missionaries who work in closed countries as "tentmakers", working in their trade so they can share the gospel unofficially, or those who smuggle Bibles into lands where it is forbidden. Certainly there are people who shouldn't be here, and I'm not equating coming for work to gospel work. I just can't seem to think of it as a purely black and white issue.

I always end up thinking of this:
" 'When an alien lives with you in your land, do not mistreat him. The alien living with you must be treated as one of your native-born. Love him as yourself, for you were aliens in Egypt. I am the LORD your God.'" Leviticus 19:33-34

Others on the tour have noted that if one really feels called to preach in America, they could work on getting here by the "proper channels", and that certainly is true. No denying that, but waiting 7 years for red tape makes for a poor novel!

Another interesting issue is the contrast in faith. In Alejandro's time he works with two fellow friars. The head abbott is very legalistic, doesn't show grace to the Indians they're trying to reach, and seems to horde worldly goods. The other friar is well-received by the Indians for the way he integrates with them, but ends up leaving his heritage to "cross over." Then Athol cleverly duplicates this in two of his modern day characters, the wealthy Delano and poor preacher Tucker.

At first glance Delano is the obvious self-righteous character, as he sits in his mansion looking down on those "illegals" and other immoral elements that he feels the church needs protection from. Yet Tucker has his own brand of self-righteousness, as he becomes hard to the wealthy gringo churches that won't help him reach out to the downtrodden. Both become examples of what we should avoid on either side of the spectrum.

A self-described "prophet" once told a group I was in that the Lord doesn't believe in "balance." There is the Kingdom way, and the devil's way, and that balance was a Greek or Eastern ideal that shouldn't be in the church. Certainly he is right in that I always want to walk in God's ways. However, I am a fallen sinner that routinely screws up, and sometimes the balance in tension that Christianity has developed over time (free will vs. sovereignty, grace vs. law, love vs. justice) is the only way we can keep from getting too off track. If anyone knows how to perfectly stay in His will, let me know - I'll be the first to sign up!

Well, if you couldn't tell, Lost Mission was a provocative book! I will go on record as saying it is in a good way, making people think about a variety of issues. I could go into more, but who's going to read this as long as it is anyway! If it intrigues you, check it out. I think you'll be glad you did.
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Final Thoughts on Sovereignty

Oh hi. Remember me? I'm the guy that used to blog here regularly...

The last few weeks (and few months in general), have really played havoc with my posting. I haven't given this up, like so many blogs that fade away. Unfortunately, Real Life Interferes (TM) has reared its ugly head in my world recently. I may have found a way to get back to a better schedule, but we'll see when I prove it, eh?

Oh, also I found out I didn't crack my wrist after all, just aggravated a cyst in it. Much better now, thanks.

I wanted to say a few words about God's sovereignty in Christian fiction. I had been talking about it over a few posts (see here for the 4 days of posts) and I didn't want to leave it hanging with nothing else said.

Overall, I briefly described a few ways that authors could deal with the idea of sovereignty on day 4. The books The Shadow and Light and Legend of the Firefish tackled the idea more straightforward in the plot and the worldview of the characters. Ultimately, it is like a lot of things when writing about God: He is transcendent, and it is hard to bring His glory, power, and sovereignty down to the level of human understanding or experience.

Is saying this a cop out? Admittedly, yes. I lost my train of thought with my disruptions. However, I think that God's greatness should challenge Christian writers to take great risks and become the most transcendent authors because of the wonder of Who they write about. And literature does show this: Les Miserable, The Brothers Karamazov, Robinson Crusoe are books with great themes of faith.

Sovereignty is a specifically tricky issue since it means God is in control, but in fiction it can clash with the the author supposedly in control. It will take a great honing of skill to see this issue mastered.

Next Few Posts

So last week was kinda busy. I ran around to a couple of different appointments to find out that my wrist may not quite be broken - still waiting to find out for sure. With all that, and work and life in general, I'm having a hard time posting here regularly. The next few days are committed to blog tours, so I'll finish my thoughts on God's sovereignty in fiction after these tours. For the two or three that are reading, that is...

God's Sovereignty and Christian Fiction - Day 4

I'm not going to be too prolific tonight. I found out today I cracked a wrist bone at the base of my right thumb, and it makes typing a little...challenging.

So how does an author reconcile God's sovereignty and a good heroic character in fiction? I must say that I see a lot of Christian fiction books that deal with this issue in a variety of ways. There may be a non-Christian hero who acts without turning to God until a conversion toward the end of the book (though if a unsaved person is just not acknowledging the leading God is giving them, what is the difference?). The action may happen so fast and furious that the characters can only react, and don't have time to really "give it to God". I am reading a book currently where some of the characters are in mortal danger and mainly dealing with the trouble with occasional "help us God" prayers, but there are other saints interceding for them.

The books The Shadow and Light and The Legend of the Firefish are pretty distinctive in how they clearly address the issue. Oh, and in thinking about this subject, the series Legend of the Guardian King also shows the characters wrestle with sovereignty throughout the action.

Okay, this typing thing is getting tricky for today. I'll pick it up tomorrow most likely.

God's Sovereignty and Christian Fiction - Day 3

Continuing on from my March 8th post, how can writers show the sovereignty of God along with a strong hero or protagonist? I used two examples from The Shadow and Night and The Legend of the Firefish, where two heroes believed very strongly that God was in control. These books had some very good, rich spiritual themes that they were communicating. I want to state up front that what I'm drawing out of these books to discuss are most likely not points the authors were trying to make. Please don't read too much into my analysis, because I'm using the stories to try and explore a different question.

Having said that, is there any problem with my question? If we go to Webster's Universal College Dictionary, sovereignty can be defined as "3. supreme and independent power or authority in a state." The Evangelical Dictionary of Theology states the sovereignty of God is "the Biblical teaching that God is king, supreme ruler, and lawgiver of the entire universe." To sum up, God is in control.

In fiction, generally a hallmark of a good story is a protagonist who acts. Stories and plots can carry a hero along, even one who is rather weak and not actively doing something. Usually though, readers prefer a strong leading man or lady - someone who may be thrown at times by what is happening within the framework of the story, but then finds a way to face the conflict and triumph over it. Many writing books talk about the need to have the main character ACT - to do something and not just be pushed around like a rag doll.

I think the potential conflict between God's sovereignty and a strong hero becomes more evident with these definitions. I'll look more at this conflict next.

God's Sovereignty and Christian Fiction - Day 2

I left off my last post for this series introducing the books The Shadow and Night and Legend of the Firefish. So what is it that links a far-future sci-fi story with a fantasy-based pirate novel?

In Firefish, Packer Throme is a failed seminary student who ended up studying swordmanship. He intends to find the elusive Firefish, hoping the discovery will help save his village and prove his worth for his love interest. Packer maintains his faith despite his aborted seminary training. Through his adventures he ponders the way God is moving him through the different scenarios. Interestingly, Packer leans into God's sovereignty in a few different episodes in the book. He stops even in times of great peril to decide that everything is God's will, and he almost passively sits by to accept whatever happens. (I have more thoughts on this book in posts from a prior blog tour here)

The Shadow and Night starts slowly, as forester Merral D'Avanos stumbles across minor attitude changes in the redeemed world of Farholme. Soon, little quirks that seemed odd unrelated fluctuations start pointing to a return of something that has not been seen in the Assembly of Worlds for over 10,000 years: evil. Merral is in the center of all that is transpiring, yet he often is slow to act because he also is content to trust in God's will. His confusion in the face of renewed evil is very understandable - since evil has been absent for such a long time, Merral and his colleagues have only ancient reports of how to act in the face of this adversity.

Is the theme I'm drawing out becoming more apparent?

I'm not discussing this as a criticism of these two books in this series. I want to discuss the idea of God's sovereignty and how that can affect how a protagonist acts in a novel. These two books happen to be strong examples of the idea of sovereignty entering into a story of tension. We'll continue on this track next time.

God's Sovereignty and Christian Fiction - Day 1

On the 26th I suggested that there was a theme or thread between two books that have been reviewed by the Christian Sci-fi and Fantasy Blog tour. The most recent was The Shadow and Night, a pure science fiction novel, while the other reviewed a few months ago was The Legend of the Firefish, a fantasy tale featuring pirates. I had a few attempts at trying to guess where I am going with this group of posts. (Congratulations to Nicole for her winning the 10 year Cowboys calendar to decorate her favorite computer office! I'm sure it will be displayed with the respect due such a thoughtful gift...) While good guesses, I'm going in a different direction.

I suppose I need to offer a quick synopsis of each book to put it into context.

I'll borrow from my previous preview of The Legend of the Firefish:
The Legend of the Firefish sets the reader in a new world, starting in the kingdom of Nearing Vast with young Packer Throme. He has a mysterious past as the son of a local fisherman who started off in seminary and has returned to his village with a talent for swordplay. He is in love with the beautiful, if sheltered Panna Seline, daughter of the local priest.

His motivation is twofold- to restore the fortunes of the declining fishing villages of his home region and to be worthy of the love of Panna. His plan entails hooking up with Scat Wilkins, notorious pirate captain of the Trophy Case, and tracking the elusive, legendary Firefish. This beast is a true sea serpent that is dangerous to all who dare hunt it, but its meat confers healing and power to the person who eats it.

Getting near Scat won't be easy with his security officer, the mysterious Drammune woman Talon, whose infamy with the sword is only equaled by her cruelty and her mysterious powers.

As for The Shadow and Night, it takes place over 10,000 years in the future on a world that humans have terraformed and colonized called Farholme. It is the farthest world from Ancient Earth, at the end of a series of Gates that allow interstellar travel. The Assembly of Worlds have seen the reign of the Lamb come, and they have a society that is fully built on His Word and His ways, without any known evil since the Jannafy Rebellion thousands of years prior.

As the colonists continue to help shape the world, a forester named Merral comes across some minor anomalies that foreshadow a greater threat growing across the world. As the unthinkable happens and their world is cut off from the rest of the Assembly, Merral must confront the return of evil both externally and internally.

As for the connection between these books - hmm. Seems I'll have to return to this thought in another post...

Legend of the Firefish - The Debate

Yesterday I tried to leave my post on the CSFF Blog Tour book Legend of the Firefish by George Bryan Polivka as a cliffhanger to pique interest. I discussed the strengths that I saw in the book and what made it an enjoyable read. Today I'm going to touch three points that dragged the book down for me a little that kept it from being one of my top books of the year (so far).

The first and second points are interrelated. As I mentioned yesterday, the book's two major characters are unapologetically Christian, and they live consistently in this and it fits the story well. However, some of the story suffers slightly because of one of the character's reliance on God's sovereignty and will. This is tricky to discuss, because I believe in the message the author is saying behind it. The problem is that it sometimes hinders the action of the protaganist as he stops and contemplates what he does. There are several instances where Packer wrestles with High Ideals - nothing wrong with that. The trick is when he does it with chaos raging around him. I might use this aspect once or twice, but it happens a few times and slows down several action sequences.

Also, the use of this plot point somtimes stops Packer from acting, since "all is God's will and he is leaving it in His hands". It has some important consequences at the end, but again it happens enough that it bumps the flow of the story and the believability of the scene.

These two points aren't terribly significant, but they were "hiccups" in the story for me. The final point is significant, but is also an interesting point of topic.

A little background: an author has to chose a point-of-view (POV) when writing. Typically the author picks either first or third-person. First person usually sticks with one character throughout the book. Third person can stay with one person, or move around to different characters. However, usually a change of character POV happens at a chapter or a definite point in a chapter.

Polivka just doesn't "break" this rule, he demolishes it. He takes an omniscient viewpoint, meaning he switches POV whenever he wants, sometimes from paragraph to paragraph.

For me, I did not enjoy this. It has the effect of confusing who is doing the talking/thinking - especially when Packer is with guys or Panna with any ladies. It comes across as "head-hopping." It really took me a while to get the hang of it, so I read the first part of the book slowly, not really getting into it until later on.

Now, when I approached the tour I knew I would blog about this, but I was just going to chalk it up to something Polivka would have to work on. However, over the last week I've read a few things that gave me a different slant on it.

1. From Mike Duran at Decompose:

From Day 1: When one lives under the notion that success means strict adherence to a set of rules — as this published author clearly implies — a type of literary legalism follows. Am I suggesting there aren’t things that tighten a story, make it more readable, more cohesive? Heck no. What I’m wondering is if this idea of “rules” is over-emphasized to new authors. The result is — as it was for me — that a lot of new authors live under the burden of legalism...

From Day 3: The writing rules have their place, but they can also blind one to the destination. After all, the ultimate goal of the storyteller is not to obey all the rules, but to get her readers safely across the street.

2. Then there was Becky Miller's interview with Nick Harrison, Polivka's editor from Harvest House:

Bryan’s ability to handle the point of view shifts necessary to pull off this feat [using so many POV's] is awesome—and unique. Not many authors handle point of view as well as Bryan does. I consider Bryan’s use of point of view a huge asset to the book—even though I know that all the writing books warn against such shifts. I think they do this because few authors can handle those shifts well. Bryan is a master at it, in my opinion.

3. Finally, there's Bryan Polivka's own comments in an interview with Valerie Comer:

As for the omniscient point of view, I find that other writers and publishers are very interested in that whole discussion, but I've never yet had a pure reader (who is not also a writer) even ask me about it. It seems odd to me that this should be out of style, or out of favor, particularly in a world where movies and television are having great success with omniscience. Lost, Friends, Rent, Oceans Eleven, even Survivor and Real World--I would argue that any ensemble-cast product gets its appeal from going deep into multiple points of view. Fiction writers are, I think, well behind the times in that regard if they hew to a single viewpoint thinking it is somehow better for the audience. I may not have done it well, but I hope that doesn't put anyone off the approach itself.

And the Christian viewpoint factors in here also. Historically, I believe the omniscient viewpoint went out of favor as secular existentialism took over the mainstream, based on a philosophy that we really can't know anything outside our own single point of reference. And I think that's just incorrect. The reason we have imagination, I believe, is for the apprehension of the infinite. God gave His creation this gift that we might know Him. And if we can know God, surely we can know others.

Now, armed with all of this information and opinion, I made an adjustment to my opinion. The thing that especially struck me was Bryan's contention that basically he's using an older style and we're conditioned to accept a status quo that this "shouldn't be done". Especially with the discussion Mike Duran has been having at his blog.

I've argued before that authors need the freedom to create as they feel called and are inspired. I applaud Polivka for making a challenging artistic stand and sticking with it. Since it was intentional, I can't fault it.

Nick Harrison thought that Bryan pulled this off well. There I might disagree some. I've seen other books that switch through a lot of POV's and I didn't get lost. My favorite book of the year so far, Abiding Darkness by John Aubrey Anderson, has some occasional POV hops and doesn't suffer from it. Interestingly enough, I would say that Anderson's hops were likely more accidental, while Polivka's were intentional, and that it is apparent in reading. Again, it didn't work for me 100%.

SO...is this a big deal? It might not be a big deal at all. I've also discussed how trying to write can ruin an easy-to-please reader. If you read this and think it is much ado about nothing, then ignore it and go buy an enjoyable book. Don't forget that I liked the book overall and recommend it. The POV issue was something that had come up during the tour, and this is my extremely long-winded response to it (best value for 2 cents ever).

I have one more little tidbit about Legend of the Firefish, but it will come a little later. Enjoy the rest of the blog tour!